Writing, publishing, book marketing, all offered by experienced authors, writers, and marketers

Monday, December 2, 2013

Marketing Innovations

As writers we know the value of showing not telling. As marketers, the mantra becomes "Sharing not Selling." We need new ways to put the message across. Video streaming software lets you capture both whatever is happening on your computer screen and the interest of potential readers. You can use it to video a webcam where you talk about your book, to present a slide show demonstrating writing techniques, to show how to track changes in word processing software. If you are doing it on screen, you can show it.Sharing knowledge helps build your author platform. Talking directly to readers builds friendships, interest in your work and best of all, sales.

image screen capture by Jing

When I started to research this article on free screen capture software, I intended to use my favorite CamStudio as the software of choice but the available freeware now is amazing. What you choose will depend on the operating system you use, whether you want to download software onto your computer or use online software.Read the reviews, then choose. This list of ten free screen recorders may be helpful and scroll down to read the comments too. Have a look at Jing from TechSmith. Here it is in action in a tutorial video about taking your first capture.I made several little videos for this article, all very easy if...you remember to turn the microphone on,you remember not to say um,um,ummm every time you stick,you remember to save them in the right place in the right format...obviously.Next time I'll be scripting what to say first. And not talking/ummming for more than five minutes--the maximum time allowed for free recording with Jing.

Annie, thanks for the screen capture link. I give you credit for working on video. I've done a couple of brief test ones, but have yet to dig in and create a fully useable video. It's on my to do for 2014. It's so important use video marketing today.

Thanks Maggie for supporting play times, especially as you are already such an expert in marketing through video readings and presentations...think I'm going to label my efforts practical procrastination.

Difficult to gauge the best ways of marketing but I would think that the short videos on You Tube get as much attention nowadays as the hours long webinars unless they are by already very famous marketers. I happily spend five minutes watching and learning but it's hard to find the time to spend two or more hours to pick out the bits I want to learn.